Senators will be asked to cast their votes on numerous amendments as they begin a debate to reshape the country’s healthcare system.
Some amendments will be designed to improve the bill, some to satisfy a special interest or pet peeve. Still others will be presented as poison pills.
Here are seven issues likely to arise during the amendment process.
Public option: An issue that unites Republicans and divides Democrats on ideological grounds inevitably was bound to haunt the Senate Democratic leadership. The notion of creating a government-run health insuranceplan to compete with private companies is seen as vital by liberal Democrats but centrists range from skeptical to deeply antagonistic, even though states could opt out.
The best hope for a positive outcome for the Democrats could rest on the chances that liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) along with centrist public option supporter Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) can forge yet another compromise version of the program to satisfy centrists such as Sens. Ben Nelson(D-Neb.) and Joe Lieberman(I-Conn.), who have threatened to filibuster the bill over the public option. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is waiting in the wings with her “trigger” compromise.
The default in Dubai is not the beginning of Financial Meltdown 2. Don’t look for dominoes here. Yes, it does raise serious questions about the vast debt-overhang in emerging economies–particularly East Europe. But, this is not a “sovereign default” in the strict sense, nor is there any great risk of contagion. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi is loaded with liquid assets, possibly as much as $800 billion. They could pay off Dubai World’s measly $60 billion debt without batting an eye. But Abu Dhabi wants to send its wastrel younger brother a wake-up-call by forcing Dubai to restructure its debt. That means that banks, bondholders and contractors will have to take a haircut, which is not surprising given the abysmal condition of the commercialreal estate market.
Dubai World owners were caught up in the same heady debt-fueled commercial construction-binge that swept across the United States. The problem can be traced back to lax lending standards and low interest rates. Now demand has fallen off a cliff and credit is getting tighter. Dubai World can’t roll over its debt or meet its obligations. That’s what typically happens when credit bubbles burst.
In “Economists: Wrong Again,”I highlighted a major flaw in the logic of those Keynesian Kool-Aid drinkers who believe current low yields and stable markets can be seen as validation of Washington’s aggressive policy of spending and borrowing to “rescue” the crisis-hit U.S.economy.
Almost L44 billion was wiped off London’s biggest companies today amid growing fears the UK financial sector could be heavily exposed to Dubai World, the state-owned conglomerate that yesterday asked for a standstill on its $60 billion (L36 billion) debt pile.
The FTSE 100 tumbled 170.68 points or more than 3 per cent to 5194.1 in its biggest one-day percentage fall since the market plunged to six-year lows in March.
Investors had been hoping the British financial sector had worked through much its toxic debt, which included exposure to America’s sub-prime mortgagemarket.
However, Credit Suisse estimates that European banks are exposed to about half of Dubai’s $80 billion borrowings, naming Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as the UK lenders most at risk from the Emirates’ worsening debt problems.
The emergence of Dubai’s financial problems now raises fears UK banks could face more writedowns on bad debts, and chimes with warnings this week from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing general of the International Monetary Fund, who said that global banks had worked through only half their toxic assets since the banking crisis broke two years ago.
Today, RBS, which is 70 percent owned by the UK taxpayer, fell 7.8 per cent, wiping off L1.73 billion of its market value. Barclays lost 8 per cent, cutting its capitalisation by L2.65 billion, Standard Chartereddropped 5.8 per cent, losing L1.9 billion. HSBC fell 4.8 per cent, losing L6.2 billion of its value, and Lloyds Banking Group lost 5.6 per cent, wiping off L1.5 billion.
In London, the FTSE 100 began its decline this morning before trading on theLondon Stock Exchange was halted for 3 1/2 hours due to a “technical hitch.”
This article was first published in The Caucus, a political science and international development journal published by the University of Ottawa. The article raises an important question in relation to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989):
The article deals with Russian anxieties with the U.S., American nuclear doctrine, American missile defence in Europe, and NATO expansion.
The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is approaching, but has the Cold War really ended and is it really a historic relic of the not too distant past? The Soviet Union may no longer exist and the Warsaw Pact may have long been dissolved, but many of the remnants of the Cold War still exist, like the conflict in the divided Korean Peninsula, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and finally the issue of missile defense. In the last few years the relations between NATO and the Russian Federation have become tense and described in terms reminiscent of the Cold War. One of the main impetuses for this resumption of Cold tensions has been the U.S. missile shield project in the European continent. The Russians have consistently made no secret about maintaining that the missile defense shield, above all else, is a threat to them.
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